Dear Husband

8

Dear husband,

There are times in your life when you need to realise your own importance. The purpose of your life. The significance you hold in a relationship. I think this is high time I need to analyse and realise my significance in this relationship.

Sidharth, I have been contemplating for a while on your dictation. Dictation because your decision was obviously what I didn't want and supported. Yet, for the sake of semblance and peace of our relationship, I tried to contemplate what you wished for. And... I've come to a conclusion.

No Sidharth, I'm not going to follow your rules and your orders like an obedient wife that you have come to expect of me. I've always been obedient to you, listening to your every wish like a perfect wife that I had wanted to become, without realising that in this quest of perfection, I slowly lost my own charm. I lost myself in this journey of becoming someone that I'm so not like.

Sidharth, I've always led my life combating with fear and scepticism. Having no parents made me such. Strong and opinionated, the attributes that made you fall for me right! But eventually, you too were hell bent on making me a puppet to control and exuberate your orders. I did all of that nevertheless because my love for you was too intense to take a stand for myself. I wanted to sustain our love, our marriage, but at what cost Sidharth? Now, when I've been blessed with a life nurturing inside me, how can you suddenly take the right away from me to decide the fate of my child?

No Sidharth, up until now that it was me who you played and toyed with, I was still ok to obey you. That was my way of respecting you and my love for you. But not anymore. I'm a mother now. It doesn't matter that I have  months to hold my baby in his physical form for my motherly instincts to kick in. He is inside me. He has a beating heart by now, that means he has transcended from being a clot of blood to a human with a pumping heart and an active soul. I just cannot be a heartless human being like you and take away this nurturing life inside me to let it bleed out as if he was nothing Sidharth. I'm sorry, I can't be that cold hearted human being. I can't.

You know Sidharth, people say being able to nurture a baby is the most beautiful feeling a woman can experience. Being an orphan, I was always sceptical of this particular phenomenon. We might have never talked about it openly, but I was always scared of having babies of my own. Yes Sidharth, true this is. I actually was scared of bearing my own child. This is th very reason I n ver tried to bring this topic between us. Ma and baba kept on poking me, enquiring when I would be giving thrm their grandchild. As if it was my lone duty! Anyways, but whenever this question would arise, I always made some excuses to dodge off the topic. I always wondered if I had that thing inside me to become a mother of not! If I could overcome my traumatized and lonely childhood and would be able to give my kid the love of a mother or not! I was sceptical, not ready, just like you had said.

But Sidharth, the moment I held that test kit in my hands and watched those two parallel lines that indicated this baby inside me, all my scepticism just effed off. I don't know how, when,  and why, but I just fell intrinsically in love with this beautiful creation inside me. There was a kind of feeling inside my heart that I just can't describe in words. It was beautiful, unbelievable, out of this world kind of feeling. I felt like I was missing out on something that this baby just instantly filled me up with. It was as if, he just bound me with an unsnapable bond the moment he let me feel his presence. And... It just took me 2 mins to fall irrevocable in live with him. Exactly the same way I fell for you!

Is it possible Sidharth? To fall in love with two people exactly the same way? It is possible for a woman to love two people equivalently at the same time? I'm somewhat confused you know. Would I just spare this kid more love than you? Is it really possible? Because I've certainly never loved anyone more than you in my life till date. And I don't think that is ever possible. So would I love him less? Would I be doing injustice to him by loving him less than his father?

I don't know. I have no answers to these questions at all. All I know is that, I am in love with my baby Sidharth. I already love him as my own. And I simply can't chose to let him die that too with my own bare hands! I can't Sidharth, I just can't.

I know we have had some heated arguments before your office this morning. I know you just ordered me to get ready to terminate "it", as if he just doesn't mean a thing to you, but Sidharth, I will not do any such thing. I will not be a silent robot listening to your every orders this time.

There is a point you should take a stand for yourself in life, and this is that point for me.  And if you love me, like you claimed to love me 6 years back, you will accept this baby eventually. Might not be today, but eventually, I'm sure you too will fall in love with him as well . How can you not? This is as much a part of yours as much as he is mine right?

So my dear husband, I choose to not terminate this baby after all. Please forgive me to not to follow your orders this time. I know we will have a other set of heated conversation when you will return from the office and I might not be able to tell you the details of how and why I'm doing this. You know I'm not so good with words like you, so I might not be able to express myself properly. Just please, for once, try to take things from my perception. I'm a mother now Sidharth. A mother! A relationship I never had in my life. And the moment I realised I was one, a strong determination brewed inside me to just experience this relationship. Please Sidharth, let me feel how it is to have a mother around. Let me feel how it is to love your kid unconditionally. How it feels to experience a part of your flesh and blood take the human form and grow up in front of you.

Please Sidharth, I hope I will have your presence and your consent in this new journey of our life.

And if in any case I don't, I just don't give a f**k this time Sidharth. I'm sorry for this filthy language, but..... No words to justify my protective instinct for him. I guess this is what you call a mother's instinct, hai na!

Waiting for your return with pounding heartbeats... Just be with me Sidharth, please!

Yours and only yours
Shehnaaz

I feel a dirty hatred sten within me. Only, this hatred and regret is for myself and for being that closed and cold b**tard I had turned to back then.

" We call a foetus it to gender neutralize it Shehnaaz. I'm not as heartless as you think me to be like!" I whisper, getting to read another piece of her secretive soul once again. Yes, secretive, she had, with time shielded her soul from me. Or it was rather me who pushed her away so much that she had to shield her soul for her own sanity.

" I was just not ready Shehnaaz. Emotionally I wasn't ready. I had never given it a thought, to have a child of our own. I was too engrossed in upscaling out lives. But I was doing that for us. For you, for me and... Probably a baby in the future. But at that point in life, I was just not ready." I feel my throat clogging up with all the rumination of the past.

A few tears roll down my cheeks as I fumble to gather my own sanity of being all alone in this huge lifesize apartment of yours. Big..enormous.. without a soul around me.

And amidst all the silence without her, all my justified excuses fell just like the name of it. Excuses!

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